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Basic Information

The Monument to the Third International, more informally known as Tatlin's Tower, is one of the most ambitious architectural project never built. It was proposed by Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin in 1920 to be built in Petrograd, (current day St. Petersburg) and serve as the headquarters of Comintern (also known as "the Third International").

The monument was designed as a double helix of glass and steel twisting skyward at weird angle over 400 m high, surpassing the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In its base, a large cubical structure would serve as an auditorium for public lectures and legislative meetings. Oh, and it would also rotate at a rate of one revolution per year. Above the cube would be a smaller, pyramid-shaped structure intended for administrative functions which would rotate once a month. And above that, a cylinder housing an information center that would issue news bulletins via loudspeaker, radio and telegraph, would rotate once per day. There were also plans to put an enourmous screen on the side of the cylinder and to build another projector capable of shining messages on the clouds on overcast days. (Holy Bat-Signal, Comrade!)

The tower was never constructed. It has been estimated that it would have taken more steel to build the thing than existed in all of Siberia.